He certainly wasn’t Messing around with a chance to represent Canada at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in South Korea on the line.
Keegan Messing, an Alaska resident who had dual citizenship though his mother, a former Edmonton resident, will represent Canada and his home base club in the country — the Sherwood Park Skating Club — in the upcoming Olympics after it al came together for him ate the right time during the recent Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in Vancouver.
After finishing third in the short program, Messing’s Charlie Chaplin program, in which nailed a quad in combination was enough to give him an overall score of 259.25, just 1.09 points ahead of Toronto’s Nam Nguyen for a silver medal at nationals and Canada’s second Olympic spot alongside 10-time national champ Patrick Chan.
“I felt very confident going into nationals, so much so that I was actually more nervous than I had been in quite a few years,” said Messing, who turned 26 on Tuesday. “All the competitions leading up to nationals, I was skating very well, very consistently. I was able to fall back and rely on my training and just trust myself.”
Messing said he can hardly believe that he has finally reached his goal of going to a Games.
“This is the ultimate dream, so much so that I can still hardly believe it is real,” he said. “It’s 23 years in the making since I first started skating. This is my third Olympic trials. I’m pretty stoked. My best finish at nationals before this was fifth. This is my first ever medal at a national championships. I actually forgot about that aspect because I was so excited about making the Olympic team that I forgot how big a deal it was to get my first national medal at the same time. The Olympic thing kind of trumped that.”
So, how does one prepare for the opportunity of lifetime?
“I’m a rookie going to the Games this year. The veterans gave us some advice on what to expect, so I have a little bit of that going for me,” Messing said. “Honestly, I am just trying to train hard and get myself to a point where I can trust my training and do what I have been doing for my whole life.”
Sherwood Park Skating Club coach Terri Gallant was thrilled to see Messing, who makes two to three visits to the Park per year, achieve his dream.
“We felt he had a pretty good shot at it, seeing at how he had been doing at his summer competitions and his international exposure that fall,” she said. “We thought he had as good a shot as anybody in the mix and a lot of people in the know were predicting he could be the one who captured that second spot. He was the most prepared he has ever been with the best solos and that type of thing in the years he has been skating for Canada. He just really laid it down in the long program, especially. He started out a little jittery, but it was like he said nope and then calmed down. He got a lot of good stuff done. He doesn’t train here full time, but the fact that he represents our club and has our name behind him is a pretty cool thing. He’s come and been with us and knows all the kids well, it is very exciting for all of us.”
Messing said he can thank his decision to declare himself a Canadian for helping him get to his ultimate goal.
“Honestly, I do not feel I would be where I am today with my skating if I had not started skating for Canada,” he said. “They have given me so much more support than the U.S. ever did. I really owe a lot to Canada for the amount of support they have given me.”
The 2018 Winter Olympic Games take place from Feb. 9 to 25 in PyeongChang, South Korea.
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